The snow falls, a shower of glitter against golden sunrays that have pushed through dark clouds. My children and I stare out the window, breathless with wonder.

“It’s like a snow globe!” one of them exclaims. 

For a moment, I can almost imagine that my world is small and sparkly and encased in glass. A space where only good exists and nothing bad can enter.

A shadow covers the sun and reality fractures daydreams into sharp shards. There is no life without suffering, I have learned. There is nowhere to hide from pain.

Yet I recognize that the brief window of sunlit snow is a gift. A reminder that although there is no glass buffer to shield me from bad things, there’s a Father who gathers up my broken shards and holds me in the midst of them.

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

2 Corinthians 4:18

There is grace in the brokenness. Peace in the restlessness. Comfort in suffering.

Hope in everything.

And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.

1 Peter 5:10

There is no shadow to mar this hope. There is no reality that can fracture it because this hope is reality. It’s truth.

Gospel truth.

And so…

In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.

1 Peter 1:6-7

Amen and amen.